Originally Posted by Molearner

This is what intrigued me so much upon reading from this site.....this is the excerpt that caught my attention:

"Fall of Lucifer
Although the Dark Principle is passive and unmanifest in God, and never becomes active, the possibility of evil arises in free beings. Free beings can choose to be centered in the natural egoic Self. This is to remain at the level of Contraction. Or else they can be centered in the Light Center, the expansive power of Love. Evil and disorder enter the world when creatures become centered in that lower self. Once selfish desire is kindled, it just becomes stronger. Instead of letting the Divine Light reconcile opposing forces, they get stimulated resulting in anguish. Life becomes struggle and anxiety.

Evil first entered the Cosmos when Lucifer, the head of our universe, became self-centered thereby rejecting the divine order. Lucifer’s fall was the result of pride and the pursuit of knowledge apart from God. He rejected the feeling of humility in the face of the Divine mysteries. Curiosity and the desire for novelty became dominant. Thus evil, Hell, and the Dark Principle entered the world.

Our personal task, therefore, is to reconcile the extremes of the forces of Darkness and Light. As the Hermetists taught, that is necessary for the recovery of the Prima Materia, the element of immortality. Then it can be molded by the Will for creative purposes, without painful toil, “transforming work into play”.

This must begin with self-knowledge in order to recognize the Luciferian temptations in our own souls. This should be easy to do, since Lucifer is the Prince of this World.

Adam’s Fall
Earth was situated spiritually within the sphere of Lucifer. Lucifer split the world into Darkness and Light, separating God’s Wrath from God’s Love, making Equilibrium difficult. The world became dense and gross.

As we pointed out above, man is not just a “rational animal”, but rather a composite being containing elements of all things. Thus he has facilities to know things on all planes, including the physical, astral, physical, and divine things.

The human race was ethereal, so Adam was a luminous being permeated by a celestial essence. His mind was innocent, no knowledge of evil, without avarice, pride, envy, or anger. Adam’s body was not dense, since the inner life was the master of the body. Adam’s inner life was in touch with Heaven; he could communicate with God, the angels, and nature. His being was tripartite, in harmony with each other:

Spirit: light principle
Soul: dark principle
Body: in the world of sense formed through the union of the light and dark principles
Nevertheless, virtue requires the possibility of vice and the experience of temptation. So Adam was tempted by Lucifer, decentering his attention onto the world. He was tempted to experience the pairs of opposites, thus disturbing his previous state of Equilibrium. This was the Fall into duality: the experience of each side of light and dark in isolation.

Hence, our task to reconcile these opposing principles. Unlike Lucifer’s Fall, Adam did not really wish to oppose God, but merely to experience earthly pleasures. Therein lies the clue to the way back.

Adam and Eve
Originally, Adam was a dual unity, including Eve. Boehme describes Adam-Eve like this:

Adam was a man and also a woman, and yet neither of them distinct, but a virgin full of chastity, modesty, and purity, namely the image of God.

When Adam’s attention was enticed by the world, Eve (the feminine part of his nature) prompted him to separate. Noting that the animals were male and female, he/they were overcome with desire to copulate like mammals.

Adam’s deep sleep refers to his forgetfulness of the angelic world; he then awoke in the external world, separated from Eve. He lost the unitive consciousness in dualistic thinking. They ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, becoming subject to death, decay, and corruption. Now part of the sidereal universe (i.e., under the stars), they lost awareness of anything higher.

Because of Lucifer and Adam, even nature has become gross. In the world there is a mixture or alternation of the two principles of the Dark and the Light. There are storms and beautiful weather; poisonous plants and delicious fruit; savage beasts and noble animals. Curse, decay, corruption, and death struggle with blessing, health, and life.

Man has sunk to the animal plane of existence, tending towards the bestial. His inner disposition is like the animals. Man must extirpate these instincts to become wholly human, and restore the image of God. Adam should have restored creation to order, following the fall of Lucifer. Unfortunately, he is unable to bring the opposing forces into Equilibrium. Christ, the second Adam, re-establishes man in his primal dignity as Lord of Creation."

I specifically focused my attention on this excerpt:

"Adam was a man and also a woman, and yet neither of them distinct, but a virgin full of chastity, modesty, and purity, namely the image of God."

I have postulated in the past that Genesis presents 2 creation stories of 'man'. The first creation story was of the spiritual 'man'. If we were created in the image of God we, therefore, had to be spiritual in nature....because God is a spirit. We get hung up on defining 'man' as being masculine. If this is accepted who will say that woman is not the image of God ? If we ascribe to that viewpoint then would that not imply that a separate God who was female must have created 'woman' ? That would put us in the awkward position of no longer believing in one God. I was gratified to see that Boehme recognized this and, to my mind, made the logical hypothesis.

It is difficult to attempt to gain an understanding of the Bible if we are stymied by the very first 2 chapters of the Bible. I cannot accept that the second creation story of 'man' is simply another version of the same story that was added at a later time.